


these hands i hold are skin and bone

by tyirie



Series: i’ve been waiting for you to come home [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt/Comfort, Jaskier and Yennefer will become friends because i said so, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Kinda?, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Platonic Relationships, Protective Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Whump, Yennefer is bad at Feelings, also they roast Geralt cause he deserves it, no beta we die like renfri, post mountain break up, she doesn't realise it yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23736586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyirie/pseuds/tyirie
Summary: Yennefer saves Jaskier. They bond - sort of.---She notices something familiar in the curve of his mouth just before she turns away. Begging Melitele for it not to be true, she moves closer to a dying man and looks at his face. His nose is broken and his skin is covered with a layer of old blood, but now she sees his bright blue eyes, sees the echo of the familiar features in his gaunt face.“Jaskier,” she calls, and he closes his eyes.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: i’ve been waiting for you to come home [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1912825
Comments: 247
Kudos: 1480





	1. I know your fingernails are the colour of rust (and your veins are empty of dust)

**Author's Note:**

> \- i really liked the scene in the book where Yennefer saves Jaskier so i wanted to make something sort of like that for Netflix characters  
> \- (titles are from TAD songs)  
> \- i mean Geralt is bad at feelings but is Yennefer really much better  
> \- wrote it while going crazy in quarantine

She doesn’t recognise him, when she finds him, not like this.

It’s pure luck, or as _some_ would say – destiny, that she finds him after all.

It’s a week after Sodden and memory of the restless energy still burns inside her, she cannot sleep and cannot be still, and yet there’s nowhere for her to go. The concern in Tissaia's eyes makes her skin crawl. So when the rumours reach them, that remains of high class Nilfgaard officers are still in the hiding, she pretends to give a shit and leaves, looking, like the rest of them.

Ten minutes after she steps through the portal she finds abandoned camp, and she finds Jaskier, and doesn’t recognise him.

She sees a man lying at the edge of the clearing and her powers tell her that he’s alive, though he really doesn’t look it. She turns him on his back with her foot and he makes no sound except for a barely audible wheeze. He looks like a corpse, cold, limp and bloody. His hands and feet are bound.

She spends a good minute contemplating, if she should just put him out of his misery. It seems like he is most likely to die even if she makes her best effort, and there’s no knowing how much he actually can tell her before his last breath.

She kneels beside the body and presses her hand on the man's bloody forehead, forcing his conscious to snap back in. It’s cruel and effective.

“Do you hear me?” she calls.

He slowly opens his eyes – splashes of bright blue on the bloody mess of his face. Focuses on her face and just... stares.

“Can you hear me?” she repeats impatiently.

His chapped lips twitch and his mouth curls to a lopsided half smile – the sound his throat makes is something vaguely resembling laughter. His eyes are wide and frantic.

This is hopeless, Yennefer thinks.

She notices something familiar in the curve of his mouth just before she turns away. Begging Melitele, destiny, and all the other fuckers for it not to be true, she moves closer to a dying man and looks at his face. His eyes are unfocused — that last glimpse of consciousness stole his last strength. His nose is broken and face is covered with a layer of old blood, but now she sees his bright blue eyes, sees the echo of the familiar features in his gaunt face.

“Jaskier,” she calls, and he closes his eyes.

***

It is funny, she thinks, as she makes the fire. How it was with Geralt — she thinks, cutting the ropes around Jaskier’s wrists — it started with the unconscious bard and now it has ended with the same damn bard falling on her hands. It’s fucking hilarious, she thinks, as she drags him from the dirt onto her cloak near the fire. She doesn’t use magic — he’s light as a feather.

It is a Geralt thing, she tells herself. It is a Geralt’s bard, annoying and sometimes simply infuriating, but he likes him, and he won’t forgive her if he ever finds that she let Jaskier die.

She thinks briefly about taking him back through the portal but dismisses that idea — he’s too weak to survive it. She goes back alone, gathers supplies and some food under Tissaia’s gaze burning a hole in her back. She barely meets her eyes, tells her “I have to deal with something”, and slips through the portal before she has a chance to ask.

«Something» doesn’t seem to move, since she left him. She furrows, feeling a small spark of life trembling inside him, feeble and unsteady. If she wants the bard to live she needs to be fast.

Yennefer crouches beside him and cuts through his rugged shirt, assessing the damage. It is bad — he's covered in bruises and cuts, old and new, half healed and bleeding. Burn marks on his arm and face. Neck painted in black and blue. Fingers broken. On top of all, he’s starved to his bones.

Whoever did it wasn’t trying to kill him, not really. Not a single one of his injuries is dangerous on its own. All of them planned, calculated. Deep and serious enough to cause pain, not severe enough to be fatal. Torture – her mind supplies, cold and practical, while uneasy shiver runs down her spine. She has seen worse (hell, she has done worse), – of course she has, but it is not a monster or creature or cunning spy threatening the kingdom, it is a little human bard who jumped around Geralt, sang, and looked amusingly disgruntled near her.

It’s just a Geralt thing — she tells herself, washing bard’s wounds with wet cloth and covering them with salve.

When she’s sure he won’t die at any given moment, she’ll drag his miserable ass to the Witcher and will be done. With the bard, with Geralt, with everything. The look on Geralt’s face will be something, she thinks absently, finishing with bandages and eyeing the bruise on the bard's neck. That one is particularly bad, fresh and swollen.

Almost like the last time.

Yennefer wonders if this time he’ll be able to talk after. Well, Geralt always complained anyway.

Now comes the hard part. She touches his temples and closes her eyes. Spell is complex and should be precisely balanced, so she works slowly, tuning the bard’s body into healing, circling the currents around worst injuries, the way the body won’t drain itself over. She can see it now, feel it, from the inside, all the damage, all the broken bones and bruises. The crushed cartilage in Jaskier’s throat. There’s no spell able to piece it all back together and mend right away, all she can do now is to show the body the right way to heal itself.

So she does. After a second of hesitation Yennefer also pours some of her own energy into him. She has still not gained her full strength, but the bard will be dead by the night, with his own life force almost out. Now as she has seen inside, Yennefer is surprised he is alive after all, because there’s no life, no strength left in Jaskier bones, no warmth in his blood, all of it gone out, only his heart still beating somehow, weak and unsteady.

She makes sure the fire will hold on and lies down on the other side of it, completely exhausted.

***

Yennefer wakes up in the darkness to flames dancing around her, bursting and slipping in her veins. It tugs her in and beckons with a choir of voices – a feeling painfully familiar. It scares the shit out of her. She closes her eyes again and breathes until it fades, until there’s no flames, only a small fire, barely alive, and a broken bard curled near it.

She doesn’t want to think about it but her mind does it anyway, sharpened over the years – decades, on situations like this. Why would Nilfgaard want Jaskier? Did they get him by mere chance, deciding that some moronic bard with loose tongue will tell them everything they need – and what do they need?

Or they actually wanted that particular bard.

Yennefer realises, that actually, despite Jaskier’s constant chatter she never heard from him a single word revealing who he really was besides a slutty bard stuck to Geralt’s side. He could have been anyone, anyone very valuable to Nilfgaard. Or, Yennefer thinks smirking, he could have simply fucked the wrong person. But above it all there’s a constant nagging sensation she has, a gut feeling, that even if there was more to Jaskier, it didn’t matter at all. She heard rumors of Geralt’s misadventure with queen Calanthe and has put it more or less together after his slip about the destiny child. Whatever happened there, Geralt had ties with Cintra. Jaskier was the Witcher’s bard – and that probably all it took for him to be found and captured, and it was what almost got him killed.

She and Jaskier haven’t really become friends, over the years, and they weren’t enemies either. They’d bicker and Yennefer would roll her eyes and make empty threats and Jaskier just wouldn’t ever shut up. Sometimes, just sometimes, they would share _a look_ , a hidden smirk, when Geralt was… well being Geralt.  
She also didn’t even notice it at first, and then later, as they kept meeting, was never completely sure, – the way Jaskier’s eyes flickered, the way he stole glances of Geralt, while singing and prancing around some tavern, the way he looked at Yennefer - heavy and raw, moments before he’d put on his cocky face. Yet she was never sure, not until she and Geralt were done and weeks later she heard some other bard sing that song. The Witcher bard’s new piece, they said. Then she is finally sure.

_Don’t worry, bardling_ , she thought bitterly then, – _he’s all yours._

She moves to Jaskier’s side, and with surprising relief finds that he no longer resembles a lifeless corpse. His breathing is loud and ragged, eyes moving under eyelids, arms wrapped around himself. She touches his cheek with the back of her hand and it’s warm and sticky.

It’s just a Geralt thing, she thinks, looking at blood smeared across her hand. She pulls out a piece of cloth, pours water on it and carefully wipes the bard’s face clean from sweat, blood, and dirt. Without it, in the dim light of fire she finally sees his face clearly. It’s all sharp lines and edges, not soft and round as she remembers it. Sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. She remembers how his face would light up, how he’d smile at Geralt – sunshine and warmth – and cannot find it there anymore.

He’s so young, she thinks, almost bitterly, before she can catch herself.

***

She dozes on and off the rest of the night, as Jaskier’s sleep becomes more and more restless. He shifts and shudders and whispers things in raspy breaths, things Yennefer doesn’t want to know.

He wakes up when morning slowly turns into day, and stares into the sky with blank eyes. Yennefer notices and kneels beside him.  
«Jaskier,» she calls, trying to keep her voice mild. (It feels strange – that name on her tongue without mockery or anger). «Do you hear me?»

His eyes slowly focus on her and his mouth opens slightly. Its corner twitches and he wheezes, with a horrible wet sound gurgling in his throat, but before it turns into a fit of cough Jaskier looks surprised. His arm flies to his throat.

“What-” he tries again, his voice hoarse and raspy.

“Don’t talk,” Yennefer cuts him off. He looks up, wary and disoriented, but carries on, forcing out something incoherent. It sounds as if a sick animal tried to talk.

“Your throat hasn’t healed,” – hisses Yennefer, familiar annoyance filling her – “If you want to keep your voice – shut up.”

He does, his hand still hovering above bandages on his neck. Then he stops and lifts his hand to his eyes. He lacks strength for it – his arm shakes terribly, and he has to support it with the other one. Yennefer watches as he carefully moves his fingers, one by one, before his eyes.

“I wouldn’t do that either,” she warns him, hauling out the water flask. She adds a few drops of potion in it, feeling Jaskier’s gaze on her back.

“Here,” she holds flask to his lips, lifting his head, pretending she doesn’t notice the way he flinches from her hand nor how his body tenses under the touch. Something tugs in her chest but she pretends she doesn’t notice it either.

“Drink”, she says, and he closes his eyes and drinks, greedily, wincing with every gulp – she feels every shudder through his bony neck.

He doesn’t try to talk again, dizzy and haggard, closing his eyes as soon as his head is lowered on the ground.

He wakes up again in the evening, and she tries to feed him some of the broth. It goes slowly, – Yennefer can tell from his eyes and wet lips how hungry he really is, but every swallow makes his face twist in pain. He tries to hold the bowl at first, but gives up, letting Yennefer hold it for him.

After he doesn’t sleep right away. He watches her hands move over his wounds, watches her walk around their little camp, watches the dark behind the trees and his eyes are wary and tired.

“Rest,” Yennefer tells him. He meets her gaze and holds it for a second – something heavy and unsettling in his look.

“You are safe,” – she wants to tell him. Instead, she makes a fire burn brighter and sits near it.

Jaskier falls asleep after a minute.

***

Yennefer thinks she should be bored out of her mind – she expects it every minute she spends stuck in the middle of that forest, but she is not. Peace was never an option practically appealing to her, she spent years running from it, yet somehow it is there now. She stares into the fire and hears the wind rustling the leaves. The simplicity of it brings memories she thought were gone a long time ago.

She barely thinks of Geralt, even though the constant reminder of him breathes just a few meters away. It feels like a true ending to the whole story, at last. Heal the bard, drop him on Geralt and be free.

The next time she wakes up, she finds Jaskier awake, watching her. He is still pale, but his gaze is clear and more or less sane.

“What is this?” he croaks with visible effort, but it sounds a lot like a human voice. Among all the swirling feelings in her chest that she tries not to notice, Yennefer finds her familiar annoyance and clings to it.

“Would you care to be more specific?” she almost sneers, gets up and waves her hand at the fire, that’s almost died. Sparks fly up and it’s rearing at full strength again. Jaskier’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t move away from it.

“What are you doing?” – he asks once again, voice completely toneless – “Are _they_ gone?”

Yennefer cannot really answer any of those, so she ignores him with a scowl. it feels almost natural.

She gets him to drink and eat something — he looks strong enough, so she pulls him to a sitting position and folds a bedroll behind his back for support while he awkwardly balances a wooden bowl in his broken hands. He coughs and hisses but manages to down it quite quickly in greedy gulps. She takes it from in and offhandedly pulls blankets off his body to examine him. Bard goes very still, while she traces his deepest wounds, now closed and dry. It will take weeks, she thinks, for him to return to a somewhat normal state, but in a few days she can safely drag him through the portal out of here.

“How did you find me?” Jaskier asks suddenly, after she puts blankets over him again.

“I wasn’t looking for _you_ ,” - she answers honestly. Jaskier doesn’t look surprised.

“Of course you weren’t,” he whispers. “What are you doing here?”

She tells him about the last days of war and briefly of Sodden, and very vaguely about her role in the whole mess. Jaskier’s face is blank and Yennefer isn't even sure he follows, but she continues anyway.

“We knew there are still remains of the Nilfgaardian army in this area,” she says. “I was looking for it.”

Jaskier licks his lips, his eyes slightly unfocused. “They were here,” he says with an effort. All his words come out with a whistling sound that makes Yennefer’s skin crawl.  
“They were going to move. I’m not...” he sucks air through his teeth. “I can’t remember them leaving. I-”

“It doesn’t matter,” - Yennefer stops him. She kneels beside him, noticing bard’s eyes widen warily at her.

“Head up,” she says, and Jaskier obeys, after a moment.

She lifts his chin higher with her fingers, the gesture more gentle than she’d expect from herself, and looks at his neck closely once again. The bright violet and blue seem to have faded, and all mess of crashed cartilage and sinew now look like a normal human throat. She traces his throat with her fingers, using magic to feel it from inside.

“Say something,” she orders, and Jaskier exhales shakily, breathing for the first time since her hands touched his face.  
“Have to go. Cat’s on the stove,” he mumbles. There’s something – a shadow, an echo of a person she knows flickering and fading away so quickly she is not sure if it was ever there. Yennefer grants him an insincere smirk as something in her chest stings.

She drops her hands, satisfied with how the healing goes. Jaskier may not sing again with that silky voice of his, but soon he will be able to talk without choking on words.

She needs to give him some potions, so she rummages through her jars and vials, hands working on their own, and her mind someplace else. She hovers over datura leaves, not sure how strong it needs to be.

“Are you in pain?” she asks, without thinking. And then almost clicks her tongue with annoyance at herself. This is an stupid question, but Jaskier doesn’t react to it as it is. He barely reacts at all, eyes hazy and blank. He’s weary.

“I’m cold,” he says in a small voice, as if he didn’t really understand what was asked. Yennefer reaches to feel his forehead for fever, maybe a little too fast, and Jaskier’s head jerks away, his eyes suddenly clear and wide open. Arms half-raised, defending himself. Yennefer bites her lip. Something heavy, angry perhaps, quivers in her stomach as Jaskier exhales and lays down his arms, looking incredibly tired.

It’s just a Geralt thing, she reminds herself.

“Easy,” she says in a low voice, like she would be talking to a wild animal. “Easy,” she says, finally placing her hand on his head in a steady slow movement. He doesn’t flinch but still something twitches in his eyes.

His forehead isn't hot, there's no fever, he’s just still very weak and the night is cold, Yennefer realises, and with a flick of her hand fire is roaring. She wraps her own cloak over the bard's shoulders. He looks at her, and his eyes are foggy once again, his consciousness quickly fading.

“You should rest,” she says, as if it isn’t obvious. “Tell me how strong is the pain and I’ll give you something for it.”  
Jaskier blinks. “I don’t know,” he says, words blurry. “It just _hurts_ ”.

She makes the potion as strong as she can.

She fears it’s becoming more than just a Geralt thing.


	2. I held your hand (as you shook in the middle of the night)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- it took a little longer than I expected and im still not quite happy with how it turned out, but here we go  
> \- thank you everyone for your comments so much, they really inspired me and honestly made my day  
> \- in this part Yennefer continues to suck at feelings, but now tries a little harder  
> \- Jaskier can have a little comforting, as a treat
> 
> \- sorry for the mistakes, english is not my first language, but i'm trying

A strange kind of routine settles — it’s quiet days and quieter nights. Dried blood, dark on the bandages and vials clinking in Yennefer’s hands, Jaskier’s guarded looks. He doesn’t say much, doesn’t ask much, always tense and reserved.

Yennefer has a hard time recalling how he could fill a whole tavern with a smile and a ring of his voice.

She doesn’t know how to speak with him.

Strangely, she sometimes almost wishes Geralt was there — It’s his bard after all. Maybe he’d know what to do. It’s a foolish thought and she knows it – she knows _him_ , after all, and she can say “Hmm” as good as Geralt and apart from that there’s nothing he’d offer. Yet, sometimes, she almost wishes.

Because there’s something missing, something not quite right in the way Jaskier looks and talks and eats. He has nightmares, but they are of a quiet kind, like everything about him is these days – he never screams, never jerks awake, just flings his eyes open and freezes, not breathing, all of him completely immersed in terror. When Yennefer notices it for the first time, she goes just as still as him. She doesn’t want to alert him more, she explains it to herself quickly, because it’s not - it’s not that she doesn’t know what to do. And after a few seconds he snaps out of it on his own, exhales and relaxes, pressing his face down to the bedroll, and slowly wraps his arms around himself — something so very desperate in that motion. Yennefer watches him fall asleep with a strange tightness in her chest, and pulls a blanket over him when she’s sure he is sleeping.

Not that she could actually do much more. Fix him, make him unafraid again. She is not good at it — delicate things. It was something she and Geralt shared, or rather something they both lacked. Both hardened and shaped by their power, both too strong, too harsh for humans with their short lives and bodies so easily broken.

But Jaskier also gets better, or at least his body does. Soon he can stand with Yennefer’s support and walk around shakily, all his movements still abrupt and stiff, tension all over his face.

"My voice," he says. "Will it always be like that?"

Yennefer doesn’t answer right away, not really sure if she has a right to give him hope – or take it away.

'It's still early to say," she says. “Your throat was in pieces."

Jaskier winces at her words, and Yennefer silently curses herself.

She doesn’t know how to speak with him.

She is good with words, yes – when someone needs to be persuaded, or intimidated, or threatened.

(When she doesn’t care).

But this is Geralt’s little bard, with an expression so raw and vulnerable she is afraid he would fall apart completely if she stared at him too hard.

She comes back to the castle one more time, bringing fresh food and supplies. She also gathers more blankets for Jaskier – he is desperately shaking at nights and sometimes, sometimes it is just from the cold.

She steps out of the portal, and Jaskier, crouched near the fire, looks surprised. “You came back,” he says, and there’s a question in his words.

She probably should have told him, where she went, Yennefer thinks belatedly, feeling a small pang of guilt. That’s unexpected.

“Missed me?” she smirks, and Jaskier looks even more puzzled.

She gives him one of fresh fruits she has brought – a pear, and out of a corner of her eye watches, as he bites down into it, savouring every bite with eyes closed, juice dripping from his hands.

She thinks about other nice things that would be good for him. A bath, of course, the first one in the list. Good fresh clothes. A proper bed. Then she catches herself – this is a strange sentiment to have. She supposes she’s just _tired_ seeing him miserable.

Soon, she thinks, very soon he’ll get strong enough to go through the portal, and she won’t have to think about it anymore.  
  


***  
  


"Why are you doing it?" he asks on the evening of a fifth day. They are sitting beside the fire and Yennefer plays with it, lazily making the flames into silhouettes with a fling of her fingers. The fiery horse trotting in circles wavers when she hears the question, but she keeps it steady. After all, she _is_ good at magic.

“Doing what?” she asks for some reason, knowing perfectly well what he means.

“This. Being here. Helping me,” Jaskier says, tone flat.

Yennifer almost says “It’s a Geralt thing” but stops herself. Sighs. Phrases it a little differently.

“A parting gift,” she mutters.

He understands instantly — of course he does — and for the first time she sees something in Jaskiers’s eyes that isn’t dead.

“Geralt knows about this?” he asks breathlessly.

"Not yet," Yennefer says, with an uneasy feeling. This might be harder than she anticipated.

Jaskier sits up straighter. His fingers start to pick on the bandages without him probably realising it. “He cannot know,” he says softly. “You cannot tell him”.

To think about it, Yennefer should’ve expected something like this.

“Why not?” she asks – already feeling tired.

Jaskier huffs. “Don’t pretend you don’t understand. You know Geralt.” He looks her in the eyes and there’s something raw in there. “He’ll think it’s somehow his fault. That they got me because of _him_.”

“And that isn’t true?” she asks, now almost sure that she was right. Nilfgaard wanted not just any bard, but Geralt’s. She’ll have to ask him later. She’ll _have to_.

Jaskier goes silent for a moment. “It matters very little,” he manages quietly. Then his face changes, as if he remembers something.

He looks back at Yennefer. “You keep in touch with Geralt?”

“Not really, no,” she says. To her surprise it’s clearly not the answer he wants to hear, his face falls and he presses his lips tight together. 

Yennefer signs. “If not Geralt, where would you go?” She realises how it sounds only after she says it – unnecessary cruel – but Jaskier's mind seems to be elsewhere.

“Don’t know,” he says indifferently, twitching one shoulder. “Anywhere.”

She doesn’t get much from him later that evening. He looks even more tense than usual, and Yennefer wants to ask, but doesn’t find the words.

***  
  


That night he shudders in his sleep, burrowing into blankets, his movements more and more frantic as his arms get tangled up between them, breaths wet and sharp. Yennefer hopes he’ll calm down by himself, but it gets worse, panting turning to whimpers and then to words.  
“I don’t know…”, he whispers, “Please... please, I don’t know”.

She wants to wake him up, call out his name, but another idea comes to her mind — a little bit more demanding, but in ways much simpler – she won’t actually have to wake him up.

She puts her hand on his head — just her fingertips, light and careful on Jaskier’s temple — and then closes her eyes sinking into his mind. It's quite simple magic, not really a spell, more of a trick. Wrap the horrors and tuck it away. It would be a harder task to do on someone conscious and not so weakened at body and soul, and she has done it a lot of times before, so maybe because of that she dives in too fast, too confident. One second she’s hovering above the surface, and next she loses ground, loses her touch, gets pulled in, and

_and_

_she is a child curled in a bed, she is a voice carrying over people’s heads, she is looking at a tall figure in the corner, and it hurts hurts hurts, and there’s a hungry void in her chest, she is nothing and she is everywhere, she is falling and there is no sun, no sun, and it hurts_

_she is on the ground and someone is standing above, there’s light and green and she’s running barefoot in the forest – her face gets shoved in the mud – the music lifts her up but she runs, farther and farther, the lute’s strings burn at her fingertips, people cheer and someone laughs roughly as steel carves into her skin, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing, she is nothing and she is everywhere and someone is standing above, and there’s a hunger that overtakes and she runs, she runs through the forest, she runs searching for someone she runs and she is hungry and so tired, she runs and she lands on the wet ground, she sees her own face frowning at her and she sees Geralt, and something tugs inside, she sees Geralt and his voice rings in her ears, and it hurts and and she wants to beg but she screams, she screams or tries to, there is no sound, no light, lute’s strings wail under elf’s fingers and there’s Geralt_

_there’s Geralt and she clings to him_

_and she remembers_

she remembers and fights her way up and out, with a howl stuck in her throat, still feeling the shards of her broken larynx moving when she tries to swallow. She presses her hands to her temples, not thinking, not understanding, just breathing, slow and steady, sinking back into her own mind, unlearning to be someone else.

It is a horrifying feeling, but it has happened before, when she was younger. More reckless.

Breathe in, breath out, sink into her and only her memories. The good and the bad and the nightmarish ones. It's a strange feeling, after being in Jaskier’s mind – after being Jaskier – it is something loud, bright and _beautiful_ , despite all the pain and the shock.

However when she raises her head she sees nothing of it in Jaskier’s round eyes glinting in the dark right at her. He looks half-mad, all the little composure that he has gained in the last days gone.

“What did you do?” he hisses – lips trembling.

“It is fine,” she says, words feeling foreing on her tongue. “You’re fine.”

“Fine? Gods, Yennefer,” he says through gritted teeth. ”You made enough effort to leave me with my voice, twice already, so you can simply fucking ask what you want to know, instead of fishing it from my head.”

Yennefer barely knows what he’s saying, still feeling like she’s been repeatedly hit in the head with a log, so she waves her hand at him weakly, pressing another to her forehead.

“That wasn’t… my intention.” Yennefer breathes out. She doesn’t feel too eager to explain what she was doing either, and Jaskier doesn’t ask. They sit in silence – Yennefer, rubbing her forehead with eyes shut, and Jaskier, knees pulled to his chest, eyes in the ground.

He speaks first. “You’ve seen it then,” and the growl in his raspy voice gets so low that it would probably make Geralt jealous.

“Seen what?” says Yennefer. She has gathered herself, more or less, but the world around still seems like a painted picture. Odd and unreal.

Jaskier shakes his head. “What I did,” he says, barely audible.

“It doesn’t work like that”, she says to him. “What _did_ you do?”

These are the wrong words and the wrong time – she shouldn’t ask it like this, but she is so tired.

Jaskier goes white. Yennefer starts to think she won’t get an answer, when he finally speaks.

“They want Geralt,” he blurts out, and closes his eyes instantly, as if it could make him invisible.

Yennefer stays silent, feeling that if she hurries him, he’ll stop talking at all.

“They are looking for him,” he goes on after some time, with his eyes still shut tight. “Him and the child.”

She has expected something like that. “It’s Geralt”, slowly says Yennefer, “He’ll be fine.”

But Jaskier winces and presses his hand to his forehead. “It’s not just that,” he says, face hidden.

Yennefer waits. He breathes in. “When they realised that I’m actually... that I don’t know where he is, they started to ask other things.” His hand is now pressed so hard to his temple, that his nails go white. “Where he rests. What jobs he takes. The potions. Things like that.”

He drags his hand down his face, uncovering his eyes, wide open and glinting in the dark. Hand now over his mouth.

“And I had to keep talking,” he says, voice muffled. “I just had to… I am actually quite good at it, you know,” he huffs in his palm, and his eyes are mad. “Talking but not saying anything that matters. Only this time I might've… I might’ve said something they needed.”

He inhales, deep and desperate, and finally drops his hand. “I don’t even remember what I was saying near the end of it.” He doesn’t look at Yennefer. She notices his whole body trembling slightly as his fingernails dig into his forearm. “They must have gotten something from me. They must have, because then he…” his hand flies up to his throat but stops midair. “I couldn’t speak anymore.”

He closes his eyes again, slumping down. Yennefer knows shame when she sees it.

For some reason it makes her very angry.

“Tell me,” she says in a low voice. “Do you remember any names?”

“Daravos,” he says, after a moment, bringing himself together. “He was the one in charge. And another one. The name is Hagro. It’s the one who...” he stops, licking his lips, as if looking for the right word. “The one who was asking about Geralt.”

 _The one who tortured me_ , Yennefer adds in her mind.

“Good,” she tells him.

He shakes his head. “I don’t really remember much more-”

“It is fine, Jaskier,” she tells him, “It is more than enough.”

She repeats the names under her breath, making sure she remembers them. If they cross her path one day – well... Yennefer really hopes they will.

Jaskier however notices the look on her face and misinterprets it, shrinking down even more. Fear and shame now almost palpable in the air around him. “I didn’t mean to,” he says quickly. Defensive. “I was trying not to-“

“Jaskier,” she says quickly. For some reason it’s unbearable now — him being scared of her. She tries to make her voice gentle. “No one would blame you,” she tells him, pointing out every word. “You did well. You survived.”

It sounds banal and she knows it, but it’s the best she can offer at the moment.

But Jaskier looks like she hit him.

And then suddenly his whole face crumbles – he turns away, face buried in his hands, and his shoulders shake, his whole body shakes, and he doesn’t make a sound, only sharp inhales interrupting the silent sobs.

She hasn’t seen him cry before – not a single tear.

And now he can’t stop.

She bites her lip and moves closer. Slow and careful, placing her hand on his back tentatively – a light touch. His shoulders hunch even lower but he doesn’t flinch from her, doesn’t pull away, and she reaches and wraps her arm around him, another one on the back of his head. “Here, bardling, here,” she whispers, not really registering her words. She can feel now his whole body shaking violently in her arms and she instinctively holds him tighter, as if she could keep him in one place. He gives in, slowly, first leaning to her, then hiding his face in her shoulder, breaths becoming more and more audible and then finally he’s fully pressed to Yennefer, one hand gripping her forearm and she hugs him, tight and close, pressing her cheek down his head. “It’s over”, she says. “It’s all over.”

They sit like this — he cries and she holds him.

He stops after some time, but doesn’t pull away, going limp in her arms. “Here,” she says, shifting their position and laying him down. “Like this. Rest”.

He settles down, his head on her lap. He moves his arm, fingers now resting near Yennefer’s hand, almost touching. Then he closes his eyes.

She holds his hand.

***

It goes a little easier after that night. Yennefer still feels from time to time like she’s walking on eggshells around him, and Jaskier still has that blank look most of the time, but.

But.

Something changes. So little, that neither of them notices it at first. The way Jaskier doesn’t flinch from her touch anymore. The way Yennefer stays close to him, — a reassuring pat on the shoulder, a hand of his arm, after she finishes checking his bandages.

He looks a little better — skin less pale, eyes a little less haunted.

Sometimes he sits with his face towards the sun, eyes closed, drinking in the warmth and light, and there is something so tender in his expression, that it makes Yennefer’s heart clench.

He has enough strength now to travel through the portal, she thinks. Yet she’s not in such hurry like before to go through with it.

“Are you sure you don’t want to return to Geralt?” she asks him.

Jaskier looks uncertain for a moment. “We don’t travel together anymore,” he says finally.

“Why not?”, she asks, taken aback.

Jaskier shrugs. “Geralt changed his mind, I suppose.”

Yennefer raises her brow — suddenly it all starts coming together. This explains the absence of new songs. Oh and that also explains the last one. The one about her.

 _Geralt_ , she thinks, _you stupid, stupid fuck of a Witcher._

“You mean he had one of his fits and told you to fuck off?” she asks.

The way Jaskier winces tells her that she’s right and she sighs.

“It never stopped you before, has it?”, she says more gently.

Jaskier slowly shakes his head. “There’s no point now.” He’s silent for a few seconds. Then he looks directly at Yennefer and it’s finally an expression on his face she recognises.

“He was very upset, you know,” he says, sounding like he’s picking up the conversation they had before. “When you left. He was heartbroken.”

Yennefer scoffs before she can help it. “Did he tell you what he did?”, she asks, feeling the anger rising. She should’ve let it go by now. She hasn’t.

“I don’t know what he did or what he might’ve said to you,” says Jaskier, voice quiet but determined, “But you know – it is fucking Geralt. He feels one emotion and gets so terrified of it that he’d rather jump off a nearest cliff than convey it to proper words.”

For a second there’s a tiny smile forming in the corner of his lips, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Geralt does love you”, he says simply. Yennefer is surprised how that words completely lack bitterness.

She feels anger at those words, but the image of Geralt appears in her mind against her own will – the Witcher, sulking on that dear horse of his, lips pressed together, tangled mess of hair.

Alone.

Something dull and unpleasant pangs in her chest.

“You do love him too,” she says, not really sure why. “And you can stand him much better than I.”

Not a single muscle moves on Jaskier's face – he’s good, she’ll give him that.

“Is it _that_ obvious, huh?,” he says, more to himself than to her.

Yennefer laughs, sincerely. “Jaskier, darling,” she says. “You put it in a song for the whole Continent to hear.”

He tilts his head and she can swear there’s a tiny spark in his eyes. “What do I hear,” he drawls. “Does Yennefer of Vengerberg pay such close attention to the songs I sing?”

She thinks for a moment to tell him that actually she listens to all of his songs – it is a good way to keep track of Geralt – but decides it will be too much.

“Well this one you wrote it about me,” she says instead. “A very flattering image, I must say.”

Jaskier smiles – it's small, but it’s there. “It is a bit funny actually – everyone who heard it just thought I had an especially bad affair.”

“Geralt could’ve picked it up, you know,” she tells him. “He isn’t always that dense.”

Jaskier smirks, but it’s mirthless this time. He doesn’t say anything.

“He’d be glad not to be alone on the Path.”, Yennefer adds softly.

Jaskier shakes his head, bitterness now in his eyes. “I can’t return, not like this.” He pauses. “I am not…“ - he lifts his hands and gestures around himself. Around his throat. “I can’t sing. I can’t do anything for him,“ he says at last. There’s no sting in his tone, only defeat, as if he accepted it a long time ago.

 _Oh Melitele_ , thinks Yennefer, _he is as stupid as his Witcher._

“You think he kept you for your songs?,” she says, fighting the urge to roll her eyes.

“Well I’m sure it weren't my charming looks”, huffs Jaskier. There’s a little spark in it – the echo of their usual banter. “Not that I have any left,” he adds quietly.

“Excuse me?” Yennefer says exasperated. “I didn’t spend so much time putting your ridiculous baby face together for you not to appreciate it.”

Jaskier looks at her for a moment, puzzled, and then slowly traces with his fingers the bridge of his nose, the burned scar, now pale and half-healed, and his eyes widen. Yennefer realises that for some reason he hasn’t really felt his face before.

“Huh,” he says quietly. “You truly can do magic.”

She instinctively wants to say something snarky in response but strange softness in the his look stops her. «Lucky for you, yes», she says evenly.

He doesn’t look at her, when he says it.

“Thank you.” Soft and quiet.

This is when she decides.

***

They step out of the portal near the keep of Sodden Hill — Yennefer, and a bard leaning on her, his arm over her shoulders.

Tissaia squints at them, as they walk inside the walls. “Is that..?” she asks, brow raised. Yennefer always forgets that Jaskier actually is famous.

She helps Yennefer settle Jaskier inside one of the rooms — travelling left him exhausted, and they leave him to rest.

“Does it have something to do with that Witcher of yours?, Tissaia asks, as they stand in the courtyard.

Yennefer laughs quietly. “No,” she says. “Not really.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- ooops i decided i also want to do another chapter with Jaskier's POV  
> \- I also started writing a Geraskier fic that happens right after this one, so this probably will turn to a series  
> \- if you liked it - please leave a comment, and i will love you til the end of my days


	3. I’ve run out (of my words, my song)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- first of all huge thanks to all of you who left kudos and comments, I was overwhelmed with feedback i got <3  
> \- like every time i get a comment i sit down and start writing, so you know what to do  
> \- ok yes there are going to be 4 chapters (this time i am sure, this is a final number, i suck at planning)  
> \- I decided to separate Jaskier’s chapter in two cause it made sense, considering the plot  
> \- I got a bit sick so it took longer than i expected, also, since i split the chapter, this one is quite short, hope you'll still enjoy it

Jaskier is dead. 

He is rather sure of it now – it doesn’t feel like living, it doesn’t feel like _anything_.

There’s nothing. He’s nothing.

They threatened him with death so many times – and he actually was afraid of it, at the beginning. They must’ve killed him at last, it is a simple explanation, and the most obvious one. 

He’s cold, but he isn't. He cannot feel it. 

The voices are gone.

The pain is the last to fade, but eventually it is gone too, taking the last connection to the world he has. 

There’s nothing. 

Jaskier is dead, but he isn’t. There are still thoughts circling through his mind, flashes of colour, scraps and shreds of memories. He is not sure how it is possible.

When he was a little boy, wild and restless, he couldn’t sleep at night, staring in the ceiling for hours. So he tried to teach himself falling asleep at his will, believing that if he wanted it bad enough, his mind would switch off just that second. He never succeeded.

Now he wonders if he can make himself die properly by the mere effort of his mind. 

Jaskier is dead, but he isn’t – it all returns at once, the pain and the cold and the colours. There’s a voice, a familiar one, but he doesn’t recognise it, not until his eyes focus on the witch’s face. 

Yennefer. 

Of course. 

He smiles – or tries to – as the world quickly fades away again and he believes he is having his last thought.

He thinks _this all is so fucking funny_.

***

Jaskier isn’t dead, and he finds that he has liked it better before, when he thought he was. The pain is back, it’s different, but it’s there, everywhere, in every corner of his body. He wonders if Geralt also has ever – _no_ , he doesn’t have enough strength to think of Geralt. 

He doesn’t have strength to think about anything.

His thoughts are bleak and his body is so heavy, it feels like he’s pressed to the ground with the weight of the whole world. 

He tries to say something, make a sound, just to prove to himself that it’s real – he’s real – and chokes on a sharp pain in his neck and mouth. It feels like he’s been eating glass.

Right. He remembers. 

They made him voiceless. That was the moment when he realised – it was all over. Before it he was clinging to some kind of foolish hope, not even being aware of that himself. He had never been caught in something _that_ bad before, of course not, but he had his good share of misfortunes. And always, _always,_ he escaped, simply running far far away or talking his way out, or the combination of both. There also was a third option – he grew very used to it in the last years. There always was Geralt. When it was something that couldn’t be fought with words, he had Geralt, who didn’t speak at all, but had one very sharp sword. 

Somehow, in the very last moment, even with the most unfortunate turn of events – he always escaped. 

That's how it always was, so he kept believing, in the back of his mind – believing he could find a way out from this mess. He believed, until knotty fingers gripped his neck, until something was cracking inside of it with the most horrible sound he has ever heard in his life – only then he realised something with an incredible certainty. 

He was going to die there. 

He couldn't run. He couldn't talk. There was no miraculous escape. 

(Geralt didn’t come.)

Jaskier hasn’t died. He is still living, but it doesn’t feel like victory. Someone else did come, he thinks wearily. He cannot really remember, but there was someone. He stares at the sky, and it hurts even to breathe. 

***  
  


Jaskier isn’t dead. He is also not alone. 

Yennefer looks at him weirdly almost all of the time — he is not sure if it’s repulsion or pity. He is not sure which one he’d prefer. 

He doesn’t understand what she’s doing there, in the middle of the forest with him, why she is being uncharacteristically patient redoing bandages on his hands (he doesn’t know how, but they keep getting unwrapped). But he also doesn’t have the strength to think about it, so he lets her. 

He doesn’t have the strength to think about anything – his mind cannot hold the weight of even one complete thought.

It is all somewhere in the corner of his mind, a swarm of thoughts and feelings and memories, but he cannot look at it, cannot touch it. But It seems to take so much space, that it becomes hard to think about what’s going on around him, hard to speak. 

Talking hurts not just because it feels like there’s a knife stuck in his throat – the simple effort of finding words and forming them into sentences makes him nauseous, they feel so incredibly heavy on his tongue and mind, each one of them. He can’t recall how he was able to write songs – the whole idea now seems so exhausting. 

But that is something from another lifetime. All he is now – pain and a heavy body, white fog in the head. There is a bottomless pit inside his chest and everything that he ever was crumbles and falls slowly into it. It doesn't hurt — this emptiness it leaves feels so much more harrowing than simple pain.

But.

But, there’s one constant nagging thought in his head and he shuts it out, even pretends that it’s not real – that he imagined it, because he cannot bear thinking about it. And when Yennefer mentions the Witcher he cannot hold it down any longer.

 _Geralt was right about you_ , the little voice in his head tells him. _Was right not to trust you. He didn’t even let you that close to him and yet look at what you were able to do._

He has to tell Yennefer. He _has to._

He can’t. 

He even feels relief – some form of it, when he wakes up with Yennefer rummaging through his head. It is unbearable, to have someone witness what he has done (what has been done to him), but at least now he doesn’t have to say it. 

He’s wrong again. He has to.

She asks, bluntly, what she was supposed to see, and Jaskier feels like he’s falling. He is falling and he’s collapsing in on himself and – he tells her, finally, because he feels like he’s going to lose all of his remaining sanity if he keeps it buried – it’s burning a hole in his head. 

He tells her, and every word gets stuck in his throat as if each of them is covered in thorns. It takes out all the breath from his lungs, just like the punches in the gut – he knows now very well how it feels, and his chest is so tight he can barely get any air in.

He used to be good with words – he even bragged about it – never had any difficulty with saying exactly what he wanted – an elaborate metaphor, or an elegant one-liner (if he _really_ had to). 

But here he is stuck, empty, trying fruitlessly to explain that he couldn’t – that he just fucking couldn’t have done anything else.

She looks furious. The familiar fear is crawling under his skin, but then she looks _at_ him, and it is something else entirely. 

“You survived,” she tells him and it really hits him for the first time – that he did, he had lived and it _ended_ , and all the numbness that was overtaking him is suddenly gone and he’s gasping as the world flows back in him. Seconds later he finds himself weeping in Yennefer’s arms – it’s not something he would ever imagine, but his concept of pride has been redefined so many times in the last few weeks, that he’s not that bothered by it. Besides, he realises how much he missed it – the human touch that doesn’t bring pain, so he leans in and forgets for the moment everything he has ever held against her.

It feels _calm_. Her hand over his, squeezing his fingers carefully. He focuses on it, and for a moment everything stops spinning. 

***

He wakes up in the bed and there’s a wooden ceiling instead of the sky above him. He can’t really remember the last time he has slept inside. 

Yennefer took him with her, he remembers – to some place where all the other slightly unhinged magic-obsessed people currently resided. This could have been a real adventure – great song material, he thinks involuntary – something from another lifetime, but now he’s just glad not to sleep on the ground. 

The sight of the empty room gives him an uneasy feeling – he has grown used to having Yennefer near without realising it. Now that she’s not there, he feels strangely exposed. It is close to the feeling he’d have when Geralt – _no_. He cannot think about Geralt. 

He burrows deeper in the blankets – it is soft and blissfully warm, he would stay there forever, not thinking, not moving, barely existing. But soon the door opens with a creak and he startles at the sound. 

But it is just Yennefer – he never would have thought he’ll be actually relieved to see her. She notices he’s awake and walks in – usual powerful grace – eyeing him with an unreadable expression, a bundle of clothes in her hands. 

She lays them on the bed – they look clean and, to Jaskier's taste, quite plain. He’d prefer something that feels more like himself, but he’s eager to get rid of the rags he wore for god knows how long.

Yennefer notices the way he looks at it and seems to read his mind. “They don’t keep fancy silks here,” she says with a smirk. “You’ll have to do with those for now.”

“They are fine,” Jaskier says quickly, reaching for the shirt, but Yennefer stops him with a waive of her hand. 

“Wait,” she says. “Bath first. You _need_ it.” 

Jaskier perks up at her words – he does need it – his hair alone is something disastrous. He watches some men haul in buckets of water, filling the small iron bathtub in the corner of the room. The last one brings the soap and the towels and Yennefer briefly nods to them as they walk out. 

The fling of her hand – and the water is steaming. This would be very convenient, Jaskier notes absentmindedly, for all the times he and Geralt had to – he stops himself. He cannot think of Geralt. But somehow his mind continues to circle back to him, a constant beacon in his thoughts. 

He undresses and gets into the water, accepting Yennefer’s help with a faint echo of embarrassment – he’s mostly used to it by now. As his body sinks into warm water, he closes his eyes and ignores the sting it causes in his wounds. 

It’s a strange calmness it brings – not really a soothing one, just numb and quiet, it takes him in and he forgets for a time being everything that has ever happened to him. 

He feels Yennefer’s steady fingers on his hair – something distant, but grounding. Untangling the knots and washing out the weeks-old dirt, movements careful but sure.

It also brings memories, the ones he doesn’t want to remember, but there’s nothing he can do. 

When he finally stumbles out of the bathtub and sits, wrapped up in a towel with teeth cluttering from the freshness of the air, he expects to feel restored – somehow, but that feeling is not there. His skin is clean but he still feels tainted underneath, something sticky and dark wrapped around his bones. Nothing changes. 

He gets in the clothes which Yennefer hands him, trying not to look too closely at his body — it’s something that doesn’t look natural, something too bony and bruised, that cannot really belong to him. 

He’s not this. He cannot be _this_.  
  


“They are making dinner. It will be ready soon,” Yennefer tells him, and he hums in acknowledgment. Before, back there, he was so _hungry_ , he never imagined it could be that excruciating, but now it has faded into a dull twisting in his stomach that leaves him nauseated at the sight of food. He desperately wants it and it makes him sick at the same time.

Yennefer’s eyes narrow with worry — he can distinguish it on her quite well now. “Do you need anything else?” she asks. He blinks, mind completely empty, and looks back at her, as if she can tell him what he _should_ need, but of course she doesn’t. 

“I don’t know,” he says. Quiet, apologetic. “I am fine, I suppose.” It comes out flat and meaningless— Jaskier is sure she can feel it too. Her hand pats his shoulder, brief but firm. “For now, don't worry about anything,” she says. “Just rest.” 

He can do that — not worry about anything. There’s nothing to worry about. There’s just nothing. 

(He’s nothing.)

Jaskier isn’t dead, but he still can't quite get used to it.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- there will be another chapter, and this fic will be done, but Jaskier’s story will continue in the next one (i'm turning it into a series), it will be a Geraskier-centric story, but Yen will also appear there cause I love her  
> \- I will try to publish the last chapter of this one and the first one of the new fic at the same time so all of you who are interested can find it easily and continue reading <3  
> \- comments make my day, so please leave one if you enjoyed the story :)


	4. you're going too fast (you'll burn up soon)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- well, it took me MUCH longer than I expected but here it is, finally!  
> \- thank you everyone who stuck around <3

When Jaskier was young and had a different name, he ran away – old lute in his hands, song in his throat, far away from the place where he was born. A wild little thing, curious and hungry, and just lonely enough, from the years spent in a place that didn’t want him.

He runs and he sings and he learns, taking everything the world offers him and stealing the rest – the good and the bad. That’s how he becomes _Jaskier_ , a carefully built facade that he grew into over time, like in oversized clothes that finally fit. All he is – a song, a smile and a flash of colour, nothing else behind it. New home in every corner of the world, new love in every person who’d have him. Warm burn of an alcohol on his tongue, drunk eyes of the crowd on him, calloused fingers gripping the lute. It’s _Julian_ who was miserable, but not Jaskier – Jaskier has everything. 

That’s what he tells himself. It is very simple, he thinks – run from the things that hurt and cling to the ones that don’t. It works well enough, until he meets the Witcher. 

(It’s always the Witcher.)

All it takes – just some simple pain, first the sting from the words on the mountain top, then good old-fashioned steel sinking into his flesh, and he is _unmade_. Back to nothing.

He tries to remember what he loves, what he dreams of, what he _is_ – and comes up completely empty. He used to love Geralt, he thinks, or still does, it is unclear now and doesn’t really matter, it burns a hole in his mind and sometimes he thinks he might cry, but he never does. Even the music, always inside of him, engraved in his core, quivers somewhere down, quiet and timid. It used to thrive on his pain, intertwined with it, but this time it simply didn’t withstand the agony, scorched out along with everything else. 

He feels his body healing – it all returns to him, slowly but surely, fingers that move how they are supposed to, legs that can hold his weight. Even his throat doesn’t feel stuffed with sand anymore – his voice however is still something hoarse, a mess of rattling sounds, but he can use it freely now, without struggle. 

It’s not like he talks a lot though. He spends his time inside, tucked deep into his bed – and Yennefer visits him, when she can. She brings him food and watches that he eats it. She orders baths and watches that he takes them. She talks to him, more in a monologue kind of way, because Jaskier’s tongue is made of lead now and his head is filled with fog and every word he whispers tears its way through his chest, dead and painful. He still tries though, he responds, but mostly he finds himself imitating Geralt and his _hmmm’s_. He thinks he almost gets it now. Yennefer seems to understand too – she tells him stories, things that happen outside, in the keep, but doesn’t make him speak. It’s a little awkward at first but they both try to ignore it. Sometimes she brushes her fingers through his hair when she wishes him goodnight and he closes his eyes at the sensation, hoping it would last a little longer. 

At times he thinks to ask Yennefer if she could… he doesn’t really know what exactly he wants to ask of her – to heal his mind the same way she did with his body. Make it all light and vivid and alive, anything but that dull numbness curled up heavy in his chest. 

Of course, he doesn’t ask.

She looks at him strangely, and sometimes her eyes are _too_ understanding. 

***

“You should’ve just left me out there,” he mutters on one particularly bad morning, and instantly regrets it. This is a wrong thing to say out loud, a little bit too dark, something that should be confined. But Yennefer barely reacts, just looks at him, completely unbaffled. 

“I lived for much longer than you have, bardling,” she says after a while. “Trust me, it is very simple – the worst things usually are. It will be bad and hard and painful, and then one day it will be a little less of all that.” 

Jaskier blinks.

“There’s no secret to it,” she tells him. “You just live through it.” 

He doesn’t respond to it, just buries his head deeper into the pillow. He doesn’t care if it gets better, all that matters to him the way it is now, and now is the torture of the heavy emptiness in his chest that pulls and pulls and pulls, presses him down, so hard it feels like falling. 

“You will be alright, Jaskier,” she adds. Voice firm and low. 

He wants to believe her. He really does.

***

It happens almost against his will. He feels it turning over inside, and some part of him doesn’t want to let go, doesn’t want to lose the twisted comfort of the familiar emptiness. 

One day he wakes up just angry enough. 

Something, he doesn’t know what, it just changes. There’s the same tugging hole inside, only there’s also something bitter and angry in the middle of it. It stings. It makes him dig nails into his palms. 

“Small steps,” – Yennefer told him some time ago. Jaskier never does small steps. 

Every day he flees from his room as soon as he wakes up. Just like before he couldn’t abandon it, now he cannot stand being in there. He talks and laughs and charms everyone he meets, the mages, the villagers, the soldiers. He’s everywhere – in the courtyard, in the kitchen, in the stables – loud and a little annoying, because that’s how he always is.

He wants to fall on the ground, limp and heavy, he wants to scream at the top of his lungs, but he does nothing of that. He runs and pretends and thinks that if he does it long enough it might just do the trick. 

After so much time of being trapped, stuck in one place, he cannot stop, cannot go any slower – he has the momentum of an arrow that missed the target. He doesn’t stop until every dog knows his name. 

The fresh wind makes his recently healed skin ache, loud noises make him shiver, and people’s eyes on him sometimes feel unbearable, but he pretends he doesn’t feel it. 

He relearns all his old tricks, all but one. 

There’s no lute in his hands, no song on his lips. He tries to talk five times more to make up for it but it is not quite the same. He’s too fast and a little frantic.

“You are overdoing it,” Yennefer says to him quietly. 

Jaskier jokes and deflects, but it all sounds a little pathetic. He knows she’s right. There’s fleeting sympathy in Yennefer’s eyes – it also stings a little. 

“You need to slow down, darling,” she says, and he cannot tell anymore if she’s calling him that mockingly. “It saves you for now, but it won’t be enough for the long run.”

Jaskier winces – deep down he also knows that. _“What should I do then?”_ he almost asks, but it sounds too desperate. 

She keeps looking at him as if she sees right through him and whenever Jaskier catches a glimpse of worry in her eyes he gets even more annoying that he normally would be with her – which is already a lot. She has seen him at his worst but there’s a limit on how much pity he can take. 

He meets other mages, the ones that seem to circle close to Yennefer. He meets Triss, who has a soft smile and iron in her eyes – Jaskier likes her, he thinks (he’s not sure of anything these days), so he sticks around and she lets him, granting him a smile from time to time. 

He wonders how much she knows. How much Yennefer told them.

He meets Tissaia, who appears to be a leader – always so collected and slightly intimidating – she looks at him with polite amusement and he doesn’t dare get too close. There’s something so familiar in her voice and eyes and posture but he cannot really quite place it, not until he sees her and Yennefer standing together, and then he finally understands where she got all of it.

He can relate to that – the desire to fit into someone else’s skin, to become stronger. He wonders if Yennefer will kill him on spot if he ever mentions it.

He talks a lot but he also listens and hears what they say – some need to return to Aretuza, some – to scatter across the continent, but there’s no point for them to stay here anymore. 

He listens to other things they mention. A battle. The Nilfgaard sorceress. An ocean of fire that burned down everything and saved them. And he notices. He notices the way others look at Yennefer – it’s not really fear and not really admiration. He notices how she holds herself among other mages – head high and confident, maybe a little too much for Jaskier to believe it. His well-being was hung on his ability to read people for quite a long time. She is good, she is very good, but she cannot fool him. Not now, not here. 

He notices other things. Scars on her wrists. Strange rawness in her eyes when the Brotherhood is mentioned. The way she keeps away from the other mages. 

He wants to ask but doesn’t know what the question is. 

***

It comes to an end, like all things do. The people start to leave, mages and commoners, one by one, alone and in packs, their number decreasing every day. He wonders if Yennefer wants to leave with them. He wonders if she’s staying because of him – as absurd as this thought is, he can’t be sure anymore. 

He knows what it means for him, but he doesn’t want to think about it. Planning is for other people – smart, balanced – people who don’t feel like they are falling every waking minute. Jaskier is not one of those. He waits till his back is against the wall. 

After another few days – it is. 

Tissaia is the last one to leave. 

Jaskier watches as she and Yennefer talk – same stiff postures, both clearly displeased with each other. The wind carries over their raised voices, but he cannot make out words. 

At last, Tissaia leaves, steps through the bright circle and a portal closes – Jaskier never got used to seeing people disappearing in those. Yennefer turns away from the empty space that she left, looking over the forest from the edge of the hill.

Jaskier slowly walks up the slope until he is standing right beside her. She stares at the sky and the sunset paints her violet eyes into bright purple. Jaskier cannot recall how he ever believed her to be heartless or evil.   
  


“Well,” he says, not really knowing where he’s going with this. “It’s been fun and all, getting to know your kind, but-”

Yennefer winces and cuts him off: “They are not my _kind_.” 

“No, of course not,” Jaskier agrees. “You just happen to stumble upon them suddenly and - oh what a surprise, they also know magic!”

The clear annoyance of Yennefer's face is so familiar that he cannot help but to smirk. 

“Really,” he says. “You are not going to return to Aretuza with them?”

She curls her lip. “I’d rather kill myself.”

Jaskier laughs shortly. “I see.” He almost asks what she was doing here after all then, but decides against it. There’s something – something in her face and voice that makes him drop the act. 

“Bad blood?” he says after a while, in a more serious tone. “Between you and the Brotherhood?”

Yennefer scoffs. “Bad blood,” she echoes. 

After some time her features soften and anger on her face fades. “Tissaia would probably say I’m ungrateful but...” she smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “That place, that _people_ ” - she spits out that word like it’s something dirty - “it is both the worst and the best thing that could happen to me.”

There’s a pause, and Jaskier wants to ask, but she continues before he opens his mouth.

“When I... found myself in the Brotherhood,” – she smiles as if there’s a hidden joke – “it felt so natural – endless power, endless possibilities. Well, I thought they were.” Bitterness creeps into her voice and she shakes her head slightly. “It was a dangerous place for someone like me.”

"Someone like you?” Jaskier asks mildly. She doesn’t meet his eyes – hers are fixed on the sky drinking in the last light of the setting sun.

“I was young,” she says, quiet. “Young and foolish. And so…” Yennefer says slowly and bites her lip, the expression of uncertainty foreign on her face. Finally she continues: “... _desperate_. For all the things I wanted. For all the things I didn't have – and back then I had less than nothing.”

They both are silent for a while. The sun disappears completely, only the golden glow painting the trees on the horizon shows that it was ever there. 

“What do you want now?” Jaskier asks quietly, after some time. 

“I am not sure,” she says, more to herself than to Jaskier. “Where am I supposed to go after all that?”

Jaskier smiles, sincerely – for the first time in a long time. “Neither am I,” he says. “I’m so tired of all the... wandering – sleeping on the ground, following the certain Witcher who barely washes, all that.”

Yennefer finally looks at him. Questioning. Waiting.

Jaskier sighs. “I want peace. Nice things,” he adds, feeling incredibly stupid.

Yennefer’s expression softens. The sun is gone but its light still lives in her eyes.

“Well,” she smirks. “There are other people to follow around, not just the bloody Witcher." She pauses, tiny smile forming in the corner of her mouth, and Jaskier's heart leaps. "I, for example, stay in the much nicer inns.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I do plan a second work to continue this however I am not sure when that'll happen
> 
> \- as usual, leave a comment and I will love you forever <3


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